Whether you support clients in their own homes or in residential care, you’ll want to make sure they stay active and engaged. This might mean coming up with one on one activities for nursing home residents, group activities for residents in a care home, or individual ideas for home care clients.
It can be tricky to plan activities that suit all your service users, especially if you support people with a wide range of ages, abilities, or interests.
But it’s important to come up with interesting and inclusive activity ideas for your clients, to boost their mental health and keep them active.
In this guide, we’ll look at the importance of activities in social care, and share some activity ideas for home care clients and people living in residential care.
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The importance of planning activities for clients
Many people living in care homes struggle with depression and low mood, and it’s also common among people with complex health conditions who live in their own homes.
But taking part in regular activities can often help improve their mental health. A good activity programme can cater to a wide range of interests, helping to give clients something to look forward to. If you’re particularly worried about your service users’ mental health, you could even arrange something like art therapy or meditation sessions to help boost their moods.
Your activity programme can also help improve physical health. Arranging exercise classes or nature walks might encourage clients to get active. And, in some cases, just walking down a corridor to come to a craft session or book club might be enough exercise for a client.
Your activities don’t all have to be inside, either. The importance of nature for people in care is well known. You could encourage clients to go on nature walks, spend time in the garden, or even take up birdwatching.
Activities can also provide a great social opportunity for clients. Whether you work in a residential facility, home care, or a day centre, many activities encourage service users to spend time with others.
For residents living with dementia or memory loss, reminiscence sessions can be particularly important. Talking about past memories can help improve cognition and communication skills – and it can also simply be comforting for many people living with dementia.
Activity ideas for home care
If you support clients in their own homes, you don’t have the challenge of managing multiple people’s needs at once. However, you also don’t have a built-in social group in the same building, and you may have to only plan activities for times when a carer or family member is available to help.
More of your activity ideas might involve leaving the house. Alternatively, you could try some of the ideas we’ve mentioned as one on one activities for nursing home residents.
Depending on your client’s needs and interests, some activity ideas for home care could include:
- Attending local exercise classes
- Baking and cooking sessions
- Going to the swimming pool
- Going for a nature walk
- Reading together, or joining a local book club
- Watching a favourite TV show together
- Going out to a café or restaurant
- Having a spa day at home
- Playing video games together
- Working on a garden together
If your client spends a lot of time on their own, they might like to have an activity that gives them something to pass the time in between sessions – art classes or book clubs are ideal for this.
Domiciliary care software can help teams manage visit schedules and ensure activities are planned when support is available.
Tips for creating activity planners for home care
- Work with your client and their family members. They may be able to tell you about activities they’ve enjoyed or disliked in the past, as well as recommending local places to find classes or groups. Learning about your client’s interests and goals should be part of the care planning
- Consider time for appointments. If your client has regular medical appointments, remember to leave time available for them. If they’re often on the same day, avoid scheduling anything else for these times, so that your client isn’t disappointed about missing a favourite activity.
- Check whether your client has someone to accompany them. If your client doesn’t always have support workers or family members with them, will they be able to take part in activities? Plan events for times when there is a carer or family member available to help.
- Contact local community centres, leisure centres, and other nearby groups. Not all classes or sessions will be advertised online, but you might be able to find out about extra activities by contacting the organisers directly.
- Schedule downtime. It’s easy to plan a packed schedule, especially if your client lives in a busy area or has lots of interests. But a full programme of events can be tiring, especially if the person you support has complex medical needs. Remember to plan time for rest and relaxation.
- Make a visual timetable or use a calendar. Some clients will appreciate knowing what they’ll be doing each day.
These conversations should feed into your wider care planning process – using care planning software ensures you capture activity preferences alongside medical and personal care needs.
Sample activity planner for domiciliary care
If you work in home care, you might not need the same kind of structure as an activity planner for care homes. But some clients might appreciate knowing what their routine for the week will be, so we’ve put together a sample of what activity planners for home care can look like.
Monday: Yoga class at the community centre
Tuesday: Book club, followed by reading together
Wednesday: Doctor’s appointment
Thursday: Swimming, followed by lunch at the local café
Friday: Baking together
Saturday: Visit from family
Sunday: Gardening, followed by watching TV together
Activities for residents in a care home
If you work in residential care, you know that providing physical and mental exercise for your clients is crucial. Some of your service users may struggle to leave the care home by themselves, so your activity programme needs to provide for a variety of interests.
Group activities for people living in residential care
Some activities for residents in a care home might include:
- Movie viewings, either in the care facility or out at a local cinema
- Day trips or short breaks away
- Art or craft classes, taught by a member of staff or someone from the community
- Nature walks
- Book clubs
- Gardening groups
- Birdwatching groups
- Exercise classes, such as yoga or pilates, zumba, walking football, or tai chi
- Cooking classes or baking sessions
- Quizzes, hosted by residents or staff
- Themed dances or parties
- Reminiscence sessions
- Visits from local schools or nurseries
- Pet therapy sessions
One on one activities for nursing home residents
If you work in a nursing home or with frailer service users, you might need to plan individual activities – especially if your clients prefer to remain in their rooms or need to stay in bed. But you can still arrange a variety of one on one activities for nursing home residents or medically complex service users.
Some individual activity ideas might include:
- Having spa treatments, manicures, or hairdressing sessions in a resident’s room
- Reading together
- Looking through old photo albums and reminiscing
- Watching favourite TV shows, sporting events, or movies together
- Doing portable cooking sessions, such as making smoothies with a blender or decorating biscuits with icing
- Playing board games or card games
Activities that are often done in a group, such as art classes and pet therapy, can also be adapted. A pet therapy volunteer could visit a client’s room if they need to stay in bed, or a tutor could run one on one classes if the service user prefers a quieter environment.
Tips for creating an activity planner for care homes
If you’re an activity support worker, activity co-ordinator, or otherwise tasked with planning the entertainment and activity programme for your care facility, these tips may help you.
- Ask for input from your clients when planning activities. Some of your residents could have ideas that you wouldn’t have considered. You might be able to help some of them achieve life-long ambitions or dreams!
- Approach activity planning with a “yes” mindset. It’s easy to default to only agreeing to ideas that are simple to arrange, but more ambitious plans could help your clients make lasting memories.
- Get involved with the local community. You may be able to plan visits from local schools or nurseries, or arrange for some of your residents to attend classes at nearby community centres.
- Look for key dates. As well as the well-known holidays and awareness days, look for the more obscure ones. Celebrate National Biscuit Day with some baking, or International Penguin Day with a themed movie night.
- If a group activity is very popular, consider adding more sessions. This is especially crucial if an activity only allows limited numbers, such as an art class or day trip.
- Be inclusive. Not all residents will follow the same religion or be from the same culture, for example, and some people might not know about certain traditions or customs.
- Remember to plan for staff time. You might need support from your colleagues to run some activities. Whether they need to help serve food, support residents during the session, or even just help them get to and from their room, remember to check that there’s time and space on the care rota.
- Keep costs in mind. As a care provider, budgets are probably never far from your mind. You may need to pass on the cost of some activities to your service users, but remember that they may also have fixed budgets. Try to add in some free or low-cost activities where possible, such as movie nights or picnics.
- Remember to plan activities for weekends and holiday times. While some residents will have visitors during these times, others won’t – and ensuring that your activity programme continues can help their mood.
- Share your activity planner with clients and their families. This can help them plan their own weeks, and gives residents something to feel excited about.
Using care management software can help you coordinate rotas, record attendance at sessions, and track outcomes from different activities.
Sample activity planner for care homes
Monday morning: Reminiscence group
Monday afternoon: Pet therapy visit
Tuesday morning: Nature walk in the local area
Tuesday afternoon: Book club
Wednesday morning: Nursery visit
Wednesday afternoon: Gardening group
Thursday morning: Baking session
Thursday afternoon: Quiz afternoon
Friday morning: Art class
Friday afternoon: Themed dance
Saturday: Movie night
Sunday: Yoga class
Conclusion: activities in social care
Planning a good activity programme is a huge part of providing good care. Activities and events can help to keep clients active, and improve their mental health.
There’s no one-size-fits-all activity programme, though. You’ll need to be guided by your clients’ interests, abilities, and what’s available in your area. But there are lots of options, from low-key book club discussions at home, all the way up to themed dances and short breaks away.
Whether you’re looking for an activity planner for domiciliary care or need activities for residents in a care home, we hope this article has given you some ideas.
